The World According To Butch Trucks

Hello Everyone!

2012-01-21T12:50:00.000-05:00

Been a while. I seem to be going through a period of trying my best to listen rather than yell. I have, however, been reading the posts in response to my blogs. The dude that keeps saying that we were playing clubs and dives and that only the emergence of Lynyrd Skynyrd kept us around? Well if he wants to take the time the "facts" are readily available. Just do a bit of research. I have no problem with the music and accomplishments of Skynyrd and I am happy that they were able to do what they have done. Whether you like their music or ours or both is simply a matter of taste, and is your opinion of what you think is worth your time listening to. We are all entitled to our own opinions. We are not entitled to our own facts. Facts are stubborn things that remain true whether we believe in them or not. That dude's statements simply do not correspond with the facts.

Like evolution. You can say as many times as you like that you "don't believe in evolution." Guess what? It is not up for belief. Evolution is a fact that remains true whether you believe in it or not. Kinda like saying I don't believe in the reality of that tree that's about to pound me into the ground. That tree cares not one whit about your "belief." If it's falling and you are under it you're going to get pounded. Our tonsils were once glands that secreted digestive fluids back before we cooked our food. Fact, not up for debate. Once we began cooking food and stopped eating raw meat, hair and bones, tonsils became unnecessary. They stopped secreting any fluids and began to evolve out of the human anatomy. If we can survive long enough babies will be born, indeed some are already being born, without tonsils. This is one example of evolution at work. Not up for debate: FACT

As for my comments about what music I listen to; what possible difference could this make on any of your lives? Of course I have listened to Derek's records and Warren's and Gregg's. They are all excellent. What it comes down to is music is the greatest force in my life, when I am PLAYING it. When I have the time to listen I usually don't listen to any music. Most of my listening time is when I am driving around in my car. I have a collection of hundreds of college lectures from a company called "The Teaching Company." They are lectures from the best college professors from the best universities in the US and even a couple from abroad. Most of my collection is about philosophy, literature and the history of the West. The picture of Will is there simply because I think he is the most important figure in western literature. Like him or hate him, all writers since the early 17th century were influenced by him. I have recently ordered several series of lectures about the philosophy, literature and history of the East and Middle East. I am really looking forward to listening to them and learning more about the world I live in.

I did not complete college and maybe this need for knowledge is from a deep rooted insecurity. Whatever the reason I much prefer these lectures to listening to something I would rather be DOING and that I have no insecurity in my ability to do. The people I mentioned, "Trane, Miles, etc" are the DVDs I put on when I have a party or people over for dinner or anytime when there needs to be some music playing. What I choose to listen to when I am alone is my choice and has absolutely no impact on any of your lives. Why you think you need to bust my chops for my choice is beyond me. You listen to the music you choose, believe in the religion or philosophy you choose and they have no effect on me. Your choice. My choice.

Maybe I am not as opinionated as I was when I started this thing. Maybe that's a good thing. Perhaps it will make it more difficult for me to write future blogs. I, like all of you, am evolving.

Peace.

Happy Holidays!

2011-12-24T17:38:00.000-05:00

Whether you are a liberal, conservative or simply moving though this world as best you can without confrontation; whether you are a friend, enemy or simply don't know nor care who I am, may you all have a very Happy Holiday Season.

From the World According to Butch Trucks

An apology

2011-12-18T09:05:00.001-05:00

One thing that was brought to my attention yesterday was that in my moment of anger ( never write something when you are angry) I did bring others into my rant that had absolutely nothing to do with Ed King's statement. Most importantly. Lynyrd Skynyrd.

My taste in music is very limited. It includes "Trane. Miles, The Yardbird, Herbie and many others from the field of Jazz. Mozart. Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Debussey and Ravel and numerous other composers of orchestral music. I simply do not listen to those who would be considered my peers.

I am not a fan of Skynyrd's but that is simply one man's opinion. I will not deny that they did make their contribution to the musical canon and that they do deserve respect and their place in the history of music as such.

I hereby extend my deepest and humblest apologies for including them in my angry rant aimed at Ed King. They were not in any way complicit in his statements and, as far as I know, they have had no interaction with him for a very long time.

Guys. I am sorry.

As for my statement about Sarah Palin ( although it had absolutely nothing to do with Ed King's crap) that stands. She has had far more than her 15 minutes and she is heading back to Alaska with the millions she made playing the part of a potential presidential candidate.

Peace!

The Stupidest Statement I have ever read!

2011-12-17T09:22:00.003-05:00

I just had to respond to this one. Thus sayeth the arrogant, ignorant, redneck, Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd (draw your own conclusions from that):

"I thought Dowd's mixes were LOUSY on everything he 'produced'. Obviously, the material was all great.

After working with Dowd in '91, I better understood the entire relationship between Dowd & the band. Dowd was a monumental kiss-up. Sure, he was a pioneer in music engineering in the 50s & 60s...but he was damn lucky to get his name on LIVE AT FILLMORE EAST. LUCK-KEEEEEE. Dowd couldn't mix two eggs.

Great engineering by competent engineers @ Capricorn made Dowd look like a genius. The Allmans' sound was already ON STAGE. Whoever engineered GBMB was INcompetent...then combined w/ Dowd's mixing ineptness, it all ended up sounding PRETTY LOUSY."

"Dowd had the gift of kiss-a$$ like no other...and somehow got Ronnie to worship him. But I know a kiss-a$$ with bad ears when I see one. And a man whose just GOT TO HAVE HIS OWN WAY. What an ultra maroon. Though I'll acknowledge his contribution to recordings early years.

I often wonder if the Dowd Skynyrd albums were made to sound like cardboard so that the Dowd Allman Bros. albums would always be better. Though I feel that LIVE AT THE FILLMORE mixed itself...well engineered (NOT by Dowd).

MY TURN.......WRONG!!!! Tom Dowd mixed every note on that album and I was there for every one of them. It was awesome.

Then you have the LAYLA album. Talk about BAD MIXES?" Ever heard anything as god awful as Layla, or any other song from that album? Again, all mixed by Tom Dowd.

It is obvious Ed King despised Tom Dowd, and accuses him of favoring the Allman Brothers over Skynyrd to the point of Dowd sabotaging the sound on Skynyrd albums to favor the sound on Allman Brothers albums. Tom didn't have to do anything for that to happen. I promise you he gave his best to every project he did. To contradict Ed King's statement "Obviously all of the material was great." Again.....WRONG!!!! some of it sucked.

I do not even have to defend Tom Dowd in this case. All any thinking and hearing person has to do is listen to King"s "musical" catalogue and compare it with the man who mixed John Coltane's "Giant Steps" and "My Favorite Things", "Layla" and every other song on that album and just go back and check out the unbelievable list of material I added to my article about Tom Dowd. I mean "Stand By Me", "Mack the Knife" Nearly everything by Ray Charles and Aretha? Fuck, is this guy for real?

Get a copy of "Tom Dowd and the Language of Music" and listen to the tributes paid to Tom Dowd by Eric Clapton, Ray Charles and many others. Compare them and their achievements with Ed King's. Unless you consider writing "Incense and Peppermints" on a par with what those people did I think you can see what Ed King is lacking: intellect. I think he has about as much of a chance of understanding the genius of Tom Dowd as my Yorkie does of comprehending Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity.

To say that his statements are beyond preposterous and absolutely without merit would be the understatement of the year. He "knows a kiss ass when he sees one?" Hell he wouldn't know a baseball bat if it hit him up side the head. What the hell is a maroon? Ed King is a moron. I guess that was the word he was looking for. A fact for his empty head:.Tom Dowd engineered every single note on Fillmore East, as I stated earlier. The only ABB albums engineered by the engineers in Macon were ":Brothers and Sisters" and "Win, Lose or Draw." Both very poor sounding, even if one was a success. It was only after Tom rejoined us for the "Enlightened Rogues" album that we got a decent sounding record again. Sad to say we changed labels and that was the last time we worked with Tom and it shows.

Ed King is a complete airhead and does not have the credentials to make any assessments about the accomplishments of Tom Dowd (unless writing the classic bubble gum tune Incense and Peppermints" is considered a MAJOR achievement) . Tom was one of the greats of the music industry. Ed King is a very minor ant on the ass of, hell I wouldn't even call what he played music.

For making that statement he deserves to have his wife's (if any woman can stand him) or girl friend's pubes turn to fish hooks. Ed, I would suggest that you avoid ever being in the same room with me again. Tom was like a father to me and you don't bad mouth my family.

DAMN!!!! Tom was as instrumental in making that redundant sounding band, Lynyrd Skynyrd, successful as anyone. He deserves Ed King's adoration and thanks. For him to make that statement simply shows him for what he is and what he is not. Grateful being toward the top of that list.

Damn shame that this has to be my first article in a very long time. I have been trying to put together a piece on the Occupy Movement. Stay tuned.

Tom, I miss you and always will. Ed King please just go the fuck away. This would be a better world. I hear Sarah Palin is looking for a private grounds keeper as she makes her way back to Alaska. Would be a perfect gig for your butt.

Duane Allman: Oct 20, 1946 - Oct 29, 1971

2011-10-29T09:49:00.000-04:00

As you can see today is the 40th anniversary of his death. I will miss him as long as I live but one thing Duane would not want is for anyone to mourn for him. Rather I will add a copy of his discography. Spend some time today reveling in the joy of life that Duane left behind in the music he played. You have much to choose from. Remember Duane Allman. He made this world a better place.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Allman_discography

Racism, Niggerhead Ranch and the ABB

2011-10-08T13:02:00.001-04:00

Been a while since I have posted. I guess it's a combination of being busy and trying to find a subject that needs my attention. I keep waiting for this Occupy Wall Street to take some focus. So far I can't really put my finger on it enough to write about it. So I will continue to watch and hope that it might do something to turn what I believe is probably the inevitable end of the American democracy in another direction. Stranger things have happened. Until it does I'll sit, watch and listen along with all of you and hope.

This week there was an incident that Hit The Note with me. It was the discovery that the Darth Vader of Texas, Rick Perry, has a hunting ranch that includes a very large entry stone at the entry with Niggerhead written on it. Of course Governor Perry just fluffed it off as a vestige of the racist past and insisted that it had "absolutely nothing" to do with him or his views, however, African Americans make up 12% of the population of Texas but 44% of the prisoners there. His execution rate is about the same proportion. I know Rick Perry can't take all of the blame or credit for this but it does indicate that, despite what the right would have us believe, racism is still rampant. The percentage of prisoners that are black compared with white is not just a Texas problem it is the norm country wide. Unemployment for blacks stands at 17% and 8% for whites. The average income is totally skewed in favor of whites and the list goes on.

I'm going to tell a story about the Allman Brothers Band traveling the deep south, southern Alabama, circa 1971, and just one of the times we were faced with blatant racism.

We had just finished playing The Warehouse in New Orleans. The Windbag (our Winnebago Camper) was in the shop so we were traveling in a pair of rental cars along with Black Hearted Woman (an old U-Haul truck that we had fixed up, painted black and were using to haul our equipment). We had hung at some party in N'awlins and pretty much everyone had done something illegal after the show. Dickey had gotten a couple of hits of some fairly effective acid and after we climbed into the cars decided that he didn't want the world to look like it was looking while crammed into a car with all the rest of us "hardlegs" (dudes). He had gotten a bottle of some type of downer, I think it was "reds" ( seconal) and was eating them like candy in an attempt to slow things down.

We were headed to a gig at The University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, and were planning to take the major highways. We had enough sense to know that the back country between New Orleans and Tuscaloosa in 1971 was not the safest place for ten long haired hippie type white guys and one muscle bound Afro haired black guy. Unfortunately Red Dog, who was driving the lead car, missed a turn and sure enough there we were driving down twisting two-laned roads way out in the boondocks.

I don't know what genius came up with the idea, but someone decided that they wanted to eat breakfast so the next little diner we came upon witnessed a sight seldom, if ever before, witnessed by the citizens of that area of the USA.

Several of the guys, including the malfeasant Red Dog, had fallen asleep in the various vehicles so they stayed in them while the rest of us, including Jaimoe, went in to eat. I remember about seven or eight of us pulling together some tables and sitting down hoping for some grits and eggs. I also remember from where I was sitting watching the unfolding scenario that was beginning to play itself out.

A woman in a waitress uniform started to walk to our table. She stopped, turned around and walked over to a booth on the other side of the diner and. low and behold there sat the sheriff and a couple of his deputies. I could see the woman lean over and say very clearly to the sheriff "I ain't servin' that nigger." My guts began an exercise in getting a small as possible. I am certain you all know what I mean. At first the sheriff just shook her off and told her to go take care of her business.

Unfortunately Dickey's state of mind had chosen that particular moment to switch from an acid state to the reds. So here we sit in the diner with this mad as hell waitress (who, it turned out was the sheriff's wife), the sheriff and his deputies, all of us carrying multiple illegal substances, either on our bodies, or in our luggage and Dickey is outside, between the cars puking his guts out.

The waitress made a couple more trips in our direction but would stop, look at Jaimoe and do a rerun of her first trip. Finally the sheriff decided that that woman was not going to let him have his coffee in peace so he and his boys went to work. Dickey was the easiest, they just took him to a police car. Next they began a search of the guys that were asleep in the cars. One of them reached across Red Dog, found a coat laying next to him and found about 1/2 of an ounce of pot in a pocket. Bingo, we were fucked.

They came into the restaurant and told those of us trying to get breakfast that they had found drugs on those in the cars and they were taking them to jail. This began a parade of all of us there heading to the restromm where the sound of the toilet flushing was pretty non-stop for quite a while.

What the sheriff and his crew were unaware of was that we had an extra rental car parked away from where all the action was taking place. After getting rid of everything we had on us we all piled into that car and made a bee line north as fast as we could. I remember Gregg getting out his suitcase and stuff flying out of the windows as we tried to make out get away. Well it didn't work.

As soon as the peace officers realized that we had a way out and, as they thought, were not trapped at the diner, they sent a car to bring us all back to the jail. And that's where we went. Directly to the four cells of the Grove Hill, Alabama city jail where we were told to go get in those cells. We were never told that we were under arrest, why we had to get into those cells and I doubt if Miranda meant anything to those rednecks at all. Getting Dickey's fingerprint was a real adventure for them. He kept missing the page.

The picture from the top of the page is of the five white members of the band from that morning: our mugshots. Jaimoe was taken somewhere else but we'll get to that in a minute.

Believe it or not we were beginning to have a ball. Dickey had stopped puking and started singing Hank William's I'm in the Jailhouse Now and we all joined in. Before too long there began a stream of young local boys walking by and looking into the cells. You'd hear a male voice saying something like " Son, I want you to walk down that hall and see what that long haired hippy shit'll getcha." Soon a very frightened boy, mostly preteen to early teens would slowly and with a lot of trepidation come walking by. Well Augie (Red Dog) decided to do something about this and the next unlucky little boy that came walking by was greeted by a skinny, buck naked, red headed dude jumping out from the back of the cell and jumping high up onto the bars and shaking himself while he howled like a wolf with genitals flailing. That kid turned about five shades whiter, screamed and ran out. No more little boys came down that hall that day.

Later that evening we were put into squad cars and transported to the county jail in Jackson. This is where we caught up with Jaimoe. It seems that in 1971, in this part of the country, jails were still segregated. Since Jaimoe was with us, luckily we were all put into the black side. I doubt if we would have fared very well with the rednecks on the white side.

We arrived at night and we ushered into a sleeping cell that consisted only of us. There were several other cells and after we finished a rousing rendition of The Coaster's Get a Job we were greeted by some of our fellow inmates. Red Dog was his usual vociferous self and started trading jive with a couple of the other guys.

We got some sleep and next morning were all lead into the common room for breakfast. I recall lookin around the room at razorblades laying in several places and thinking I sure hope we can be friends. About that time a short cannonball of a guy they called Louisiana Shorty and an older man started wrestling around close to me. Shorty got the older man in a hold right at my feet and I'll never forget him saying "is this what you're gonna do to that red headed fucker?" My guts resumed their contracted position.

Soon the jailers came to see if any of us wanted cigarettes, cokes or anything for the day and we bought cartons and bottles for everyone. This broke the ice and we would up having a great time while we were
there.

For some reason it took a couple of days for our lawyers to bail us out and The University of Alabama made a public announcement that we were not welcome on their campus ever again. We all headed home, I believe, and took a few days off.

The outcome of all of this was that the prosecutor for that part of Alabama was coming up for reelection and this was the biggest thing to hit there like in forever. He knew he had no case. The searches were done incorrectly, the arrests were the same, but he also knew that the judge handling the case was his father-in-law. He was right up front with our lawyers and told them that, although he knew he had no case he was going to set a date for trial when we had a big concert and we would all have to be there. It would be delayed and the next time we had a big show that would be the date of the next trial. He would wind up costing us a fortune and a ton of hassle. We would up pleading guilty o disturbing the peace and paid $50,000.00 for that disturbance.

The disturbance was, after all, taking a black man into a diner full of racists. This was just one of many indignities that we and most of all Jaimoe suffered back then. If you believe that is all gone now and racism is a thing of the past, just look at that rock in Texas.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To 1974!

2011-09-21T13:51:00.001-04:00

March 13 and 14, 1970, was the first time the Allman Brothers played the Warehouse in New Orleans. The place was magic. It was an old cotton warehouse on the docks where they use to store cotton for shipping. It was built of wood and had the best acoustics and the best vibes of just about any venue we played back then. December 31, 1970, was the first time we played The Warehouse on New Year's Eve and this led to us doing the same thing every New Year's Eve until Dec 31, 1972. By this time Eat a Peach had gone multi-platinum and we were selling out places like Madison Square Garden and the Spectrum so playing a 2,000 seat venue, like The Warehouse was something we did because we had a ball playing there and those New Year's Eve gigs became the stuff of legend. We loved playing there for New Years and did for three years until it closed in 1973.

We were facing New Year's 1973, without The Warehouse and management and Bill Graham came up with the idea that we play The Cow Palace in San Francisco for two nights, December 31, 1973 and January 1, 1974. Both shows sold out very quickly and it was decided to put the show up on live, coast to coast radio. This was to be and it actually did turn out to be the largest radio audience since FDR's Fireside Chats. I believe it is still the largest radio audience ever.

Anyway, here we are getting ready to play for 20,000-30,000 people live and millions on the radio and someone tells me that The Dead had showed up to jam. Well I had had an adventure once before when we played with The Dead at The Fillmore East. The Dead had a "roadie' named Owsley Stanley that was the chemist that made the LSD for most of the civilized world. It was his goal to dose every living person, That night at The Fillmore Owsley poured enough pure acid into our garbage can of beer that if you drank a beer you'd get enough LSD from the ice water around the can to get totally loaded. I had more than one beer and by the time we were half way through our show that night I was unable to play.

Upon hearing that he was around that New Year's eve at The Cow Palace I grabbed my bottle of wine, open the lead and held it close and made sure that I drank nothing else. I did not want a repeat of what had happened at The Fillmore. Well...... New Year's came after our first set. Here's a link to the radio broadcast of 1974 arriving.

http://www.wolfgangsvault.com/the-allman-brothers-band/concerts/cow-palace-december-31-1973-set-2.html

So far, so good. We then kicked off our second set and about an hour or so into the set, just before Les Brers in A Minor, that was to include Jaimoe and my drum duet, my drums started just drifting off into space. When I could actually hit one it was like hitting a marshmallow. I just went, oh hell, he got me again. I turned around and there stood Bill Kreutzman looking just like Jesus, complete with the halo, and I held out my sticks and asked him if he would play my drums, I couldn't catch them. He did and went on to play what was to be my big time in the sun before an audience of millions. I moved to the side of the stage and thoroughly enjoyed the rest of the show which included the following jam with Jerry Garcia and Kreutzman still on my drums.

http://www.blogger.com/post-create.g?blogID=5727369088532211108

Years later I ran into Owsley and he told me that he had filled a water gun with LSD and got close enough to my wine bottle that was under one of my floor toms and shot it till he hit it enough to do the trick. Well it certainly did.

Thought it was time to lighten up the conversation.

You Have To Read This One!

2011-09-17T10:51:00.000-04:00

I was reading the op-ed section of the paper this morning with my morning coffee as I usually do and, as usual read both sides (The Palm Beach Post has two op-eds everyday. One from the "left" and one from the "right"). This morning's "from the right" was from Cal Thomas of Fox News fame. It was titled "Ron Paul was right" and was about Ron Paul's answer to Wolf Blitzer's hypothetical question about whether society should just let a young healthy thirty year old that opted out of health insurance and then fell into a coma just die. As most of you probably know this brought a few cheers of "yeah" from the audience. Mr. Thomas mentioned that they probably came from the previous debate where Rick Perry's pride in his lead in executions was wildly applauded. I would say that rather than try and tie that outburst to a simple answer it seems to me to be the prevailing ethic of the day and for some time now is an "I got mine, screw you" attitude that has become more and more the norm. It is the basis for most of the "ethical" differences that have brought governance to a screaming halt. (the obvious effect of money we'll just acknowledge as a major part of that ethic and move on.)

Where I had to stop and read what Cal Thomas wrote several times before I could even believe what I was reading was in a section where he was saying that he agreed with Ron Paul: that we should assume responsibility for ourselves and then went on to write about instances of people assuming responsibility for the needy. He said he was "intrigued by a story he read last month in London's Sunday Times. ........The headlines read "Tory Ministers to 'Adopt' Jobless Families. The ministers have pledged to set an example by volunteering to become "family champions" to the unemployed."

He went on to ask why this wouldn't work in the U.S. government? Why can't president Obama and his family, his cabinet members and agency heads each "adopt" an unemployed family and help them find meaningful employment. Then he asked the same about the Republican candidates, of course pointing out Bachman's experience in adoptions. Then he hit me with the WTF? Thus sayeth Cal Thomas of Fox News. "Warren Buffett and Bill Gates say they should pay more taxes. CAN'T THEY BE ASKED TO DO MORE TO HELP OTHERS? THEY WOULD SET A FINE EXAMPLE. " WTF? RIGHT?

How in the world could a person that writes for the public, works for the countries leading "news" organization not know about The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation? There has never been a better example in the history of the world than Bill Gates and Warren Buffett when it comes to "setting an example for helping others." You can ( and so can Cal Thomas) find out in all of thirty seconds by a fast Google search that so far they have donated over thirty billion with a B each to this foundation. They both have committed to adding greatly to that sum and eventually have pledged to give over 90% of their wealth to trying to help those that need it. They have also gotten a long list of very wealthy people to agree to join in. As Cal Thomas wrote, they also both agree that they should pay a greater share of the tax burden. Warren Buffett says he feels it is a sorry state of affairs when his secretary pays a larger percent of her income in taxes than he does. Taxes in the USA are at an all time low. Especially for the wealthy. I'll repeat that: an all time low. When we are in a recession and so deep in debt I submit that this is not the time to have historically low taxes. Let's get the economy moving, pay down some debt and then have the debate on where taxes should be. I digress.

You have to wonder what makes it through the Fox News filters to have something this wrong come out of one of their guys. You also need to ask yourselves which side do you consider yourself to be on in the battle for America that is going on right now. Warren Buffett and Bill Gates or The Koch Brothers? It wasn't that long ago that there was no reason to even ask this question. What happened?

Again, thanks to my wife for the painting. In case you can't tell it's of me. :-)

TOM DOWD: The Greatest Record Producer Who Ever Lived

2011-09-11T12:08:00.004-04:00

I have written about the man that had the biggest impact on my life, Duane Allman. Today I want to talk about the man that ranks right up with Duane. Tom Dowd was as exceptional a human being as you could ever know. Tom became a part of the Allman Brothers Band very near the beginning and stayed a part of it until his death, October 27, 2002. He was the greatest record producer that ever lived, in my book. There are many very successful musicians out there that will tell you the same, starting with Eric Clapton, Ray Charles and a list far to long to put here.

Tom grew up on the upper west side of Manhattan. He was so smart that he was going to Columbia and studying physics by the age of 16. When WWII broke out he was enlisted into a program known as The Manhattan Project. For any of you that aren't familiar with that title it is the program that developed the first nuclear reactor (Tom was there under Soldier Field in Chicago the night they removed the rods and produced the world's first nuclear reaction) and then created the bombs that ended WWII. Tom told me that the devastation of those things never really hit him until he saw the first underwater test. That's when he left the Army and thought he would head back to Columbia and finish his physics degree. Trouble was the physics that was used to develop the bomb was still classified, so Columbia was still teaching an outdated course and Tom just couldn't see himself studying a subject where he knew more than his professors. So, lucky for the world, Tom decided to go to work as a recording engineer. His first recording was done straight from a mic onto a disk. It was "If I Knew You Were Comin I'da Baked a Cake", by Eileen Barton in 1949. The list of people he went on to work with as an engineer and later as a producer is amazing:

Blow your mind and look carefully at this list http://www.thelanguageofmusic.com/discography.htm

For those of you that don't have the time to read that very long discography I'll just give you some high points, The Drifters, The Coasters, Lavern Baker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Coltrane, Cream, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Eric Clapton, Derek and the Dominos, Joe Bonamassa, just a small sampling.

Tom was a genius. He had the musician's touch but he had a way of working with musicians that was more like a psychiatrist. He could pull the very best out of any musician. Most producers have a sound that they bring with them to the studio. Tom's genius was that you could never tell that one of his works was done by him. He was simply the guy that showed us how to play the best music that we were capable of playing.

There was a time in 1970, Tom was at Criteria studios in Miami, with Eric Clapton and a group of players that either already were or were soon to become The Dominos. There was all of this talent and some incredible material but Tom just didn't seem to be able to get things rolling as well as he knew they could. The Allman Brothers had recently finished our second album (our first one with Tom), Idlewild South, and it just so happened that we were playing a concert on a field in Miami Beach. Tom asked Clapton if he had heard of Duane Allman and after a few minutes of "you mean that chap that played slide guitar on Wilson Pickett's, Hey Jude......." it was obvious he had so Tom mentioned that we were in town. Well that night may be the only time I ever saw Duane nervous. We walked onto the stage and sitting right across the front of the crowd was Clapton, the rest of the Dominos and Tom Dowd. We proceeded to blow the roof off of the place and after we finished they all came back stage and we got acquainted. We decided to head over to the studio where we spent most of the rest of that night jamming on a lot of old blues stuff in various configurations. Duane and Eric spent the time between jams talking about things like Robert Johnson, Willie McTell, etc and by night's end you could see a bond forming.

Eric asked Duane if he would like to come play on their record and, as they say, the rest is history. From that collaboration came one of, if not the best album of the '70's: Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs. This was how Tom worked. He saw what needed to be done and then set about getting you to do it, he never told you to do it. If we got bogged down on a song Tom would do something like "remember that lick you played earlier?" and more often than not the suggestion would get you unstuck and, although that lick was almost never used, it would be the impetus to get the song finally finished the right way.

I could write a book and I may one day about this great man. You can see the kind of man he was by getting a very good film made about him that was completed shortly before his death. The film is called Tom Dowd and the Language of Music and I'm sure you can get it from Amazon.com or some place like it. Trust me it is a film well worth having. Many special guests in it including Ray Charles, Eric Clapton, myself and many more.

Tom had an amazing zest for life. He loved people and music and wallowed in the fact that he was able to live his life being with people he liked (for the most part) and respected and make music with them. In all my years of being his very close friend (I was fortunate enough to live a one hour drive from him so we spent many nights together at dinner or some social affair) I never saw Tom unhappy nor ever heard him utter a single derogatory remark about anyone. Tom was my friend and my mentor. I loved him deeply and I will miss him for as long as I live.

Where Do We Want To Live!

2011-09-10T13:34:00.002-04:00

I have been working this week trying to write a post about a very special person. It has turned out to be much more difficult than I anticipated so I have decided to wait for some inspiration on that piece and write about an issue that has been nagging at me since I first read it. It was a part of the first post I put up from Oteil and it really disturbs me. I feel sentiments like this are the driving force behind what I am afraid may the death knell of the USA as a democracy. Oteil said: "The liberal notion that the Federal gov’t is supposed to give out money freely is wrong to me because it first depends on the theft of my money by the IRS. I am all for giving liberally individually but not federally. If I am allowed to keep more of my money I can guarantee it will get to the local homeless shelter, food bank, school, etc... when it is stolen from me by the IRS and given to the Federal gov’t it disappears into thin air."

Let's think about this statement. First a few hundred years ago our ancestors decided to form a society. One based on a here-to-fore untested system using a tripartite government. This government contained a system of checks and balances with the idea that this would keep any branch from gaining too much power and insuring that the people in this society could always have the final power using one man - one vote to replace any government that might abuse its power. This is a very simple definition of who we are and how we got here. That is the USA. The concept of "society" (groups of people forming unions) is as old as mankind himself. The concept that in all societies that members of these groups contribute to the common good is also as old as "society" itself.

Let's take a group of very early humans that have formed a tribe for their mutual benefit. How can they benefit from this association? It's simple enough, the men form hunting parties and provide the food. Women farm, take care of the young and keep the homes together. Each contributes to the common good. I doubt if one healthy young man would have simply said "you guys are just stealing my time and labor. I think I'll just hang here while you go get the food" and lasted very long. As humans evolved and societies became larger and more sophisticated then that labor became something else. Eventually it became taxes. Once societies formed into more complex entities then maybe some became the warriors, some the farmers, some the tradesmen, whatever but, along with their skills most societies for thousands of years have built projects on a societal scale and it took taxes to pay for them.

After stating the obvious let's ask ourselves, given that we all know that the transcontinental railway system could have never been built by allowing the population to operate under the "If I am allowed to keep more of my money I can guarantee it will get to the local homeless shelter, food bank, school, etc... when it is stolen from me by the IRS and given to the Federal gov’t it disappears into thin air." way of thinking. Really, do you think it remotely possible that the railways, the interstate system, the air traffic control system, our public school system (surely you can't believe that public education should not be provided), our Armed Forces (whether you agree with what they are doing that they are needed I am sure we can all agree upon), The Hoover Damn, etc. would have been built if we just left it up to the goodness of the average person to pay their share, or not? Do you think that we would have had any chance in hell of winning WWII without some very serious taxation that turned into most every American giving all that they could for the war effort, over and above those taxes? Do you have any illusions that this country with it's national electrical grid that was built with tax dollars and was the backbone for the industrial boom here in post WWII America could have ever happened? Really? Theft? Otiel, imagine a tour without the transportation infrastructure created by tax dollars. Think about all of the public services we use and just take for granted. There is little doubt that a lot of our tax dollars have been used for many corrupt purposes and that there is, has and always will be the need to monitor where those dollars go. I know of one story in Iraq where several truckloads of dollars, amounting to several b with a billion dollars just vanished. Shit like this goes on far too often, but to call paying taxes federal theft? Really? It all just disappeared into thin air? Really? The lack of those taxes are putting school teachers, fireman, policemen and public workers of every stripe out of work. Is this really what we want?

For the last couple of decades we have been headed (ostensibly) toward the conservative version of what the government should be (although the massive increases in our deficit happened under the three Republican Presidents, Reagan being the worst) . Taxes are at an all time low. Regulations on business are almost non-existent. We are in the middle of a recession brought on, in a large part, by these policies. In the past when this happened the electorate usually went oops and the pendulum swung back the other way keeping us away from the radical right or radical left. What scares hell out of me right now is that we know that we are in a recession brought on for the most part by these conservative views. We see the evidence everywhere. The Bush tax cuts and unregulated corporations and Wall Street Companies were the major causes of this mess. We should be headed back the other way. It doesn't seem to me that we are.

We now sit having blown trillions on idiotic wars and for the first time in the history of this country, while a few fought and died, the rest of us sat on our butts got very nice tax cuts and went to the mall. Now here we are facing what may be the defining election in our history. Where are we going? Where do you want to go? Do you really want to turn things over to people that are telling you that paying your taxes is nothing more than a rip-off? Really? If so, what will the society that replaces the one that requires you to pay taxes and the institutions that run it look like? It won't have any money, unless you feel like giving it some. Really think that system has much of a chance? Good luck.

I just Couldn't Let This Slide.

2011-08-27T11:44:00.000-04:00

I recently received a post pointing me to an article in Forbes Magazine, 08/06/2011. The title of the Article was: "A Failed Presidency -- The American Problem." Written by John Mariotti. The person simply said "another opinion you may be interested in reading." The article is the usual Obama bashing, nothing really new. If it were written today it would probably blame the fact that Obama went to Martha's Vineyard for the hurricane that's about to nail the North East.

I read the entire piece and found many problems with it. The author said something about if he were to list all of the problems with the Obama presidency it wouldn't fit into a blog. Well, that's how I feel about the blog itself. I did notice something that really points out a major reason why we are in the pickle we are: the ability of writers like this to make totally false statements, that in the past most Americans would have known were false, and get away with it. It is NOT "another opinion" it is simply false, as in a lie. Not enough people seem to care enough to call these guys on these types of lies. It points out a major factor in why we are losing our democracy, a lack of basic education.

As I have written before and I am sure everyone reading this knows, our government is a tripartite system consisting of the executive (the president and his staff), the legislative (the house and the senate), and the judicial (the Supreme Court and our system of federal courts). Each with restricted and very specified powers. The idea is that this creates a system of checks and balances that allows our democracy to flourish. Our system, as Thomas Jefferson said numerous times, must have an educated electorate or problems like this one start to emerge. This being an excellent example of a major, respected magazine feeding misinformation to an uneducated readership and these readers simply take it at face value.

I am writing about a Republican, right wing article, but this problem is endemic. Both side share the blame and if we can't do something to educate the populace then this great experiment in representational government is doomed. (It is my feeling that we have already past that point, but I will write that piece later).

Here is the offending statement: Obama’s irresponsible Feb. budget, which was voted down 97-0 by a Democratically controlled Senate.

Here's the drill:

The President, according to the Budget and Accounting Act of 1921, must submit a budget to Congress each year. In its current form, federal budget legislation law specifies that the President submit a budget between the first Monday in January and the first Monday in February. In recent times, the President's budget submission, entitled Budget of the U.S. Government, has been issued in the first week of February

The House and Senate Budget Committees begin consideration of President's budget proposals in February and March. Other committees with budgetary responsibilities submit requests and estimates to the Budget committees during this time. The Budget committees each submit a budget resolution by April 1. The House and Senate each consider those budget resolutions and are expected to pass them, possibly with amendments, by April 15. Budget resolutions specify funding levels for appropriations committees and subcommittees.

The next step is the drafting of a budget resolution. The United States House Committee on the Budget and the United States Senate Committee on the Budget are responsible for drafting budget resolutions. Following the traditional calendar, by early April both committees finalize their drafts and submit it to their respective floors for consideration and adoption.

A budget resolution, which is one form of a concurrent resolution, binds Congress, but is not a law, and so does not require the President's signature. The budget resolution serves as a blueprint for the actual appropriation process, and provides Congress with some control over the appropriations process. No new spending authority, however, is provided until appropriation bills are enacted.

Once both houses pass the resolution, selected Representatives and Senators negotiate a conference report to reconcile differences between the House and the Senate versions. The conference report, in order to become binding, must be approved by both the House and Senate.

Conclusion: It is not possible for the senate to vote down "Obama's irresponsible budget." Neither the house nor the senate CAN vote on the President's budget. They must vote on what their own committees on the budget have made of the President's budget.

Of course now that the statement: "Obama’s irresponsible Feb. budget, which was voted down 97-0 by a Democratically controlled Senate" has appeared in this article it will become more fodder for "The Failed Presidency." The fact that it is a lie does not matter and for the most part those that read that article now simply have another piece of information to use against the President.

I don't care if the President is Obama or Howdy Doody our system cannot function when we are flooded with this type of misinformation. It did happen under Bush and, unless we do something about it, it will only continue to get worse.

Thanks to my wife: Melinda, for the painting. It's of the Balinese God Layak Barak. I found it somehow appropriate.

Just Music. New Music!!!

2011-08-24T12:39:00.006-04:00

To that person that suggested that I was "living on past glories" and all of you that want to get your heads in order. Check out this from LAST MONTH. I doubt that last month is considered "past glories"

Try this one too. More of the ABB most definitely NOT "living on past glories":

Enjoy and Peace

Piedmont Park

2011-08-21T14:14:00.001-04:00

We pick up the story after the move from Jacksonville, where it all began. We played exactly one show in Jacksonville with the line up that was to become known as The Allman Brothers Band. And trust me back then no one in the band tolerated being called The Allman Brothers. When we played that show in Jacksonville Beach Duane used the name Beelzebub as our name. I'll finish the naming process by just stating that we kinda all knew that Beelzebub wasn't it, but we were at a loss as to what was IT. Phil Walden came up with The Allman Brothers due to the fact that Duane was the driving force that built it and drove it. Once Gregg joined the band and Duane absolutely would not allow it to be called The Duane Allman Band, Phil went to work selling The Brothers concept. Duane was at first very much against it. He felt that this was a band of equals and he did not want himself and his brother to become the focus of attention. However, we were still unable to come up with anything that made any sense so Duane finally relented, but the only with the caveat that there were to be no pictures of just Duane and Gregg separate from the rest of us. Of course, you have all seen the picture of Duane and Gregg on the Allman Brothers Band Album. Duane went nuclear.

Forging on: we settled into The Hippy Crash Pad on our arrival from Jacksonville either at the end of March or the first of April, 1969 and started a daily routine of spending most of the day in an old warehouse behind a barber shop on Broadway, next to the building that later became Capricorn Studios. We would spend long hours refining our skills playing together and playing all of the material that wound up on that first album. When we tired of those tunes we would simply jam, sometimes for hours on end.

When we finally reached our limit for the day we would usually head back to the pad and drop some psilocybin. I don't know where they came from but shortly after landing in the pad someone gave us a zip lock bag with hundreds of hits in it. Most likely this is the origin of the mushroom we all have tattooed on our right calves and the logo we use. Anywho, after the 'shrooms would kick in this usually, around 3-4am, it would lead to corkball games in the big room of the pad (with our beloved beer-filled Coke machine as third base). It also led to visits to an antebellum mansion (see the pictures on the Allman Brothers Band album) and trust me when I say that in that state of consciousness spirits do exist. We and they visited each other quite often.

After several weeks of work learning this new material we were busting to get out of that warehouse and play it for people. So..... we loaded ourselves and our equipment into our Econoline and what other rides we could glom and headed to Atlanta (later to be renamed Hotlanta, I believe we coined this term but can't prove it). We went straight to Piedmont Park and found a perfect spot to set up. It was a rather large flat space at the top of some stair with some electrical outlets within reach. We didn't ask permission, we just set up and started pouring out all of this music we had only played for ourselves up to that time.

There were a few hundred people within earshot of that spot and they all came runnin. Apparently many of them also went runnin to get friends and before long those few hundred turned into a few thousand. We played and we played and goddamn it was amazing. All of those hour of playing this stuff that we knew was going to raise the bar of the musical canon came pouring out. It was church, it was electrifying, it was inspiring, it was so fucking much fun that, if we hadn't formed that brotherhood of music before that time that day galvanized it. Here's a quote from The Great Speckled Bird about that day:

The Allman Brothers Band from Macon, Georgia, are a fantastically together group of young rock and roll musicians whose music draws as heavily from the blues as the experience of young white tribesmen can without exploiting its source--a few steps farther and you get a merely talented farce like Johnny Winter. Since our generation is tribal, totally unlike our parents and grandparents and their parents, it is only natural that we would turn to the black man, whose tribal roots go so much deeper and do not have thousands of years of bullshit "civilization" to cut them off from these roots, for forms with which to relate to the new world. The history of the black man in America is the history of tribal man in an alienated, fragmented, capitalistic, literate, industrial, "I"-oriented culture; young people are simply showing good sense when they attempt to co-opt black culture (just as the dying order desperately attempts to put its stamp on the culture of its youth)--but creating and redefining our own culture in terms of the new space-age tribalism is the crucial struggle and follows as naturally from where we are at now as Grace Slick follows Patti Page. The blues, the entire complex of music which has come out of the experience of the black man in America, belongs to forms and patterns and relationships to experience of which we now have only the tiniest fraction of an inkling (even that is a hell of a lot). The black man's blues (whether manifested in Lightnin' Hopkins or Smokey Robinson and the Miracles) flows out of him, while our "blues" is wrenched out bloody like a prematurely pulled tooth. Contrast the shouting subtleties and the rock-like soul of a Mahalia Jackson with the strained histrionics of a Janis Joplin (who, somewhere down under her package, probably does have some soul of her own). Art is not a product, it is a process: the blues--whether country or urban, acoustic or electric, raw or commercial--cannot be copied from records or concerts or books on black culture. The musical language of the black man cannot be co-opted simply because it happens to be powerful and sings of things we are just now recognizing as more valid than what we have been hung up in for centuries. Our music must develop its own power, its own forms, its own patterns of relationship with our tribal roots and our space-age technology in an unbroken line all the way down into our preliterate origins and all the way out into unknown galaxies.

The Allman Brothers know all this, and a lot more.

After that first Sunday, and amazingly we had no problems with police, or any other of Atlanta's power elite. Everyone was so happy and peaceful they felt like this was a good way to try and bridge the gap that would occasionally flare up into violence. When we finished some people were so transfixed they simply laid down and spent the night there. Others made sure that the place was cleaned up. Of course the next Sunday we went back and there was a shit load more folks than were there the week before as well as a couple of other Atlanta bands that wanted to play. This grew into a weekly event that went from that little place to a big flatbed stage set up on the end of a very large field that someone provided complete with a massive generator. Plus many more bands. The crowd grew to the level of around 10,000 after a few weeks and I don't recall a single incident of violence in all the months that this magical thing continued.

This is a picture of the very last Piedmont Park free concert in September 1970. By this time we had started touring and we weren't there every Sunday, but the show went on with The Hampton Grease Band and a ton of other groups keeping the vibe alive. These were magical days. They set the tone for who and what we were to be until Duane's death. We averaged in excess of 250 shows per year for the next two years and if we had a Sunday with nothing to do we would go find a park and do exactly what we did that day in May, 1969, in Piedmont Park. We did this all over the USA.

It is truly a sad fact that this can not happen again. At least it cannot happen now. Before we could play the show there with Dave Matthews two years ago a fortune was spent in permits, insurance, security, port-o-potties, you name it. I am just so very very glad that at one time, for a magical moment, it did happen and I was a part of it. For all of you that were also a part of it you know exactly what I mean. This would be a far better place to live if events like this were still a part of who we are. Maybe one day it will. We can hope.

PEACE.

A Comment From My Other Dauther, Melody!

2011-08-17T10:03:00.001-04:00

That is myself, my son, Vaylor (the kid on the cover of Brothers and Sisters and my lovely daughter, Melody, on the right). This is her addition to the conversation. It is from the perstective of a mother of two trying to raise two beautiful and very intelligent children in this mess. She most definitely brings the voice of those trying to make ends meet while we too many of us, especially those in government, continue to fiddle while The USA burns.

Thus sayeth Melody: (and I promise Piedmont Park soon).

A comment from the other daughter....

Elise, great to read your insights. I have always loved how insightful you are. We all miss you here and hope to see you soon.

In response to every political post either on this blog or anywhere else for that matter...

Once again, I may be completely idealistic and naive, but I thought that we were supposed to be working together here to try to create a better future, but all people seem to be interested in is power, money, and making sure the "others" (republicans, liberals, whites, blacks, women, men, whoever you may be the opposite of) know that they are losing. What the hell? I don't know the answers, I don't have a fix all solution that will make people wake the fuck up and understand that all they are doing is messing things up for my (and their) kids. What kind of world are my two amazing, beautiful, talented, intelligent children going to have to suffer through? I don't believe a damn word that comes out of any politicians mouth. I also don't believe anything I read anymore. I have no faith in government or the media to tell me anything near the truth. I read the comments that you write about what politicians supposedly did, or didn't do. The mistakes they made, the achievements that they did, and I don't belive a fucking word of it. Not that I believe that you (and andyone else for that matter) do not do your research and try to be as informed as you can be on this subject, I just don't believe anything I am spoon fed anymore. I am doing my best right now just to raise my kids as best as I can, but when food is becoming a luxury, it makes me wonder what the hell this is all for. I don't care about who used the filibuster the most. I don't care who is republican, democrat, liberal, conservative, black, white, man, woman, or any combination thereof. I just want someone who is going to quit being so damn greedy and selfish and fix this fucking mess!! But, once again, I guess I am just being naive to think that someone out there with any power whatsoever actually gives a damn about those of us who don't.
I won't be surprised when I hear Obama say "Let them eat cake".

Melody

Just thought I would put my two cents in....

Elise Joins The Conversation

2011-08-15T18:28:00.003-04:00

This is from my daughter. She has recently taken a post as adjunct professor of art history at the University of Tampa. I'll let her speak for herself. Seems she was unable to post it so she e-mailed it to me.

Thus sayeth Elise:

Hello! I wrote this comment to the blog and wasn't able to post it.

Hi Oteil, and thanks for your thoughtful contribution to this discussion. The formatting of this piece was a bit unclear about who was writing what. Luckily both you and Pops have very recognizable ideas and phrases, so I think I figured out which parts were yours and which were his.

Thank you for bringing up the issue of race. And to Abigail for (I think inadvertently) introducing the issue of sex. Her rage was palpable, and it's a shame she projected it all on to you, Oteil. By claiming that your anger was clouding your thinking, it seems she was disavowing her own anger & the fact that it clouds her judgement. But I've been there, so it's not like I can judge her. And being the blank screen for people to project their unresolved issues upon is, it seems to me, THE major draw-back of any sort of fame. But I'm sure there are a bunch of up-sides, right? ;) I love the fantasy she has that you are both somehow rolling in money and magically able to spearhead far-reaching social and political change. Wouldn't that be nice?!

But to return to my point, I wanted to add some thoughts to your recognition that there is racism on both sides of the aisle. To me, this is sad reflection of the fact that racism, like sexism, is an institution in our culture & our country. As such, its effects are felt at every level and its power dynamics are replicated in most social interactions--intentionally or otherwise. So in this light, OF COURSE racism is found in both parties. It's insidious and pervasive. Once one group has power over another group, it's hard to level the playing field. No body wants to give up power. This, I think, is why nobody's done anything about the Patriot Act; and it's also why nobody's likely to do anything about it in the future.

But what I'm interested to know is this: how can we mitigate bigotry with legislation? It is a proven fact that, despite of the institutionalization of hate and difference in this country, we can create and effectively enforce legislation to ensure that future generations are not subjected to the accepted expressions of hatred of our times. We've got great examples of this in our country coming out of Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and Women's Movement of the 1970s. The party that has been invested in the expansion of civil rights--no matter what personalities have been involved--has consistently been the liberal party. In recent history, the Republican party has vehemently opposed Affirmative Action, prison reform, entitlement programs, hate crime legislation, the list goes on. If we take as a given that racism is an institution in this country, then we can see that the disenfranchised, as a rule, do not have access to same opportunities for social mobility as the reigning elite. This is why "separate but equal" does not work! This is not a theory; we have all witnessed this in our own backyards. And to have some sort of regulatory intervention is necessary in fostering a future with less inequity of access to resources.

Like you, I used to be a bit of an anarchist (when you say taxation is theft, that's what that implies to me). But there is so much infrastructure upon which we depend that gets created out of the government--things that we take for granted only because we've never been without them, and things that we wouldn't want private greed to shape. Imagine if there were no highways, education, hospitals, law enforcement, court system. Every tax dollar does something; it doesn't just magically disappear. And a great part of what our tax dollars do is keep us safe from ourselves. I don't have to carry a shot-gun to go to the store. I can go to the store. Not every citizen of the world can say this. In a sense, I think we're a bit spoiled as Americans and expect to see results with no contributions, just because we take them for granted. Yes, I think we're a entitled as a people because we've been taken care of to some extent. We must contribute something to receive even the most basic infrastructure.

Anyway, this my long, disorganized pitch :) Thanks again, Oteil, for contributing to this conversation. And thanks, "Butch," for this wonderful site! Elise

P.S., John loved the bit about wanting the right to vote and own guns! :)

OTeil's Got Something To Say

2011-08-13T13:51:00.003-04:00

To give you a short answer Butch, Liberal and Progressive became bad words, even to me, when I realized that they had become sellouts just like the other side.

But lets look at your definitions and apply them to Liberals and Progressives since Clinton.

What was so liberal about Clinton selling out to Wall Street and the Fed? In 1998 when Brooksley Born (Head of the CFTC) went all the way to the Oval Office to warn Clinton about what the banks were doing in their newly deregulated freedoms, he blew her off and sided with Greenspan and Rubin. Naturally, Rubin was his Secretary of Treasury. Ms. Born resigned she was so upset and she was replaced by Gary Gensler, another one of Rubin’s deputies from the Federal Reserve. Progressive or Sellout?

What was so progressive about Clinton letting the Military Industrial Complex conduct business as usual in Kosovo? What was so liberal about Clinton being 13% worse than Bush senior in the “War On Drugs”? NAFTA turned out to be horrible for Jobs in the USA too. Obama’s trying to repeat it right now in South America. Progressive or Sellout?

What reforms did Obama and the Dems deliver us when they had control of the House, Senate and Executive branches? What did they do to advance our “maximum freedom”? They didn’t even repeal the Patriot Act! They not only didn’t end our present wars but are starting new ones. Iran’s next. They haven’t indicted one person in the banking industry for the fraud that was perpetrated. Progressive or Sellout?

How was Obama protecting our freedoms by appointing the very people that caused the financial crisis (not members of the Tea Party) to his cabinet (Geithner, Summers)? After we bailed the bankers out they foreclose on citizens without even being able to prove they have possession of their ACTUAL mortgage notes (MERS), refuse to renegotiate the principles, and freely admit that they are sitting on the trillions they have, thanks to us, instead of lending and investing in America. Do all the jobless, homeless, and savings-less Americans feel more free after the liberals had control of the whole ball of wax? Progressive or Sellout?

How has the Obama administration treated dissidents like Assange and Manning. Granted Manning was in the military, but hey, they're supposed to be liberals right? So much for whistle blowers getting a better deal.

Liberals are by definition not supposed to be racists but is that really true? Butch you sound pretty prejudiced against the Tea Party. Emotionally I am too. I have no love for racists but I accept them because its a utopian dream to think they will ever go away. As long as I can vote, own property, and have a gun then I’m fine.

I do find it fascinating that some people are allowed to tolerate racists in their own tribe while others aren’t. The Million Man March was sponsored by the Nation Of Islam. One of their core beliefs, (unlike Al-Islam) is that White people are the devil, Satan himself. Every progressive, liberal, black organization joined in that march. Why did they not repudiate the NOI as I did? My own father has a lot of racial mistrust that I will not teach my children as do some of my White and Jewish friends with their parents or in-laws. We tolerate our own racists but the Tea Party is not allowed to. Its hypocritical. Racists are also Americans and they are also getting screwed by the same people as the rest of us.

The liberal notion the the Federal gov’t is supposed to give out money freely is wrong to me because it first depends of the theft of my money by the IRS. I am all for giving liberally individually but not federally. If I am allowed to keep more of my money I can guarantee it will get to the local homeless shelter, food bank, school, etc... when it is stolen from me by the IRS and given to the Federal gov’t it disappears into thin air. If the gov’t wasn’t so corrupt, and we all had jobs and surpluses (and not because of bubbles like Clinton let the bankers create) then I would be fine with it. But we don’t and we can’t trust the gov’t to reform itself. As long as the foxes like Gensler are guarding all the regulatory henhouses we can expect more of the same.

Cornel West pinpointed it. He calls Obama and most Dems "neo-liberals". I guess they’re the Special Interests’ perfect answer to the neo-con-artists they promote across the aisle. Its all MORE OF THE STATUS QUO.

Please watch The Warning:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/warning/view/

And also a documentary called Inside Job.

http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/

I’ll leave you with a recent quote from Daniel Ellsberg in the Washington Post -

"Richard Nixon, if he were alive today, would feel vindicated that all the crimes he committed against me–which forced his resignation facing impeachment–are now legal. "

You can thank the Liberals and Progressives for that. They blew they’re chance.

Butch adds:

I agree with so much of what you say, my friend. The lack of consequences, indeed the blatant continuation of the monetary policies that are now making the wealth gap wider and wider is sickening. You bet your sweet ass that many of the Wall Street firms and the banks have hedged themselves with hidden companies that are shorting their own positions and are making a fucking killing off of this bear market.

Why is Dick Cheney particularly not in prison for treason? The outing of Valerie Plaime to get at her husband for having the audacity to expose their lies about WMD is treason. Cheney knew and should have been shot. All we get is Scooter Libby in jail for a little while. The list of those culpable in the Iraq War lies that has cost us trillions, off the books, and much worse thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousand of Iraqi lives is far too long to list. You must start with George W. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, anyone remember Wolfowitz? This is just scratching the surface.

From the other side you say that Obama and the Dems had control of the house, senate and executive branches. True but you left out a very important fact. Not one single Democratic budget bill sent from the house to the senate could get past the senate filibuster. IF Obama had gone after the Darth Vader's of the Iraq War and the financial meltdown do you really think that anything of import could have past that same filibuster? No fuckin way. Like you, my HUGE disappointment is that no one even tried, but still. if they had it would have been an exercise in futility. Especially after the death of Ted Kennedy and the election of Scott Brown even the semblance of a filibuster proof senate went out the door. You can't deny the fact that the Republicans have managed to march "lock step" to stop any major initiative by Obama and the Dems but the Dems are not able to do this. It is the ability of the Dems to represent their constituents that will never allow them to put up as united a front as the Republicans. Indeed it is the "Blue Dogs" that have made the filibuster so effective. The senate is no longer a "democratic" institution. The majority does not rule. You left this major factor out of your argument.

I have many other issues I could raise, but this is already a very long piece. let's see if it sparks further conversation.

Thank you my brother. I love you dearly and can't wait for us to get back on stage together.

And I also agree Larry Summers and Timothy Geithner just lead the list of those that should be in jail. They aren't and Summers is back to business as usual. the rest of the fuckin crooks are making another fortune on the current mess. I grow angry and redundant.

"Nuff said

The Conversation MUST Begin

2011-08-10T15:10:00.001-04:00

I have been thinking about this subject off and on for over a decade now. The picture is of an American "neo" pragmatist philosopher that I believe gives us a way to begin an evolution in our communication that could save us from ourselves. His name is Richard Rorty. He died June, 2007.

Anyone that is paying attention has to see that currently we are STUCK. Our leaders cannot lead because both sides believe that they know the Truth and that the other side is clueless. I will also add that it is my belief that this problem is much more prevalent and we are suffering far greater consequences because of of this mind set with the far right (call it the Tea Party). Never in my wildest imaginings would I have ever believed I would see what I have seen the last few days: Tea Partiers and others from the extreme right actually celebrating the down grading of the USA and the market crash. They take (indeed celebrate) full credit for causing it. There is one Tea Party congressman that railed, after raising the debt ceiling settlement (in which John Boehner said he got 98% of what he wanted) who said "if we hadn't gotten our way we would have brought it all down." This is the stuff of horror flicks not patriots that care about the United States of America. Where and what would we be doing right now if that horrendous agreement had not been reached and he and his peers had followed through with their threat? Imagine a world in total chaos, not just us, that is what he said he was going to give us. Apparently somebody believed him.

Richard Rorty was a controversial thinker and, especially in academia, had his detractors. If you think about what he says he does take the wind out of the sails of many people that are convinced they have their heads wrapped around THE TRUTH.

I believe one statement of his truly sums up what he was about and why his philosophy could help us.

we see knowledge as a matter of conversation and of social practice, rather than as an attempt to mirror nature (Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, 1979)

In other words if we don't stop the DEBATE and begin a CONVERSATION we have no way out of the gridlock we are currently in. No one has this "mirror of nature" i.e THE TRUTH. If you truly believe that Michelle Bachmann talks to god and knows The Truth from those conversations then you MUST either open your mind to other views or remove yourself from the discourse. The vast majority of us do not accept this as reality. We have other world views and if we allow the Bachmann's to take over the discourse then we are in a world of hurt. In fact I would say that to some extent we already have and we most certainly are. It is this closed-mindedness that has brought us here and it is going to take the opposite i.e. open-mindedness to get us out.

Rorty wrote, in essence, that philosophers since Thales of Miletus (considered the first philosopher) through Socrates, Plato, Descartes, Hume, Foucault, etc, etc: The Philosophers, have produced their versions of capital T Truth. According to Rorty none of these or any of the other great minds that have attempted to reason Truth out of their limited vocabularies, knowledge, experiences, etc have ever produced anything that isn't basically trivial, that couldn't be worked out with as much validity by anyone.

A monumental example of this at work was what happened to academia in the 13th century when Thomas Aquinas declared Aristotle THE TRUTH to end all other truths. This led to over three hundred years of Aristotelian Scholasticism as the only course of study allowed in western universities. All that was allowed was interpretation of Aristotle. Questioning was heresy and many were tortured and killed for doing so.

Any of you that have participated in debate know how it is done. You take a side, you don't even have to believe in it, then you make your case for why your side is the Truth. Like sports for physical fitness, this is great exercise for mental fitness. Debate however is more of a winner take all proposition, like football. If government is more interested in making sure that its side wins then who is looking out for the governed? It is a course for the collapse of a society when debate is used as the form of communication by its government rather than some form of conversation. We are seeing the results of this right now. The Tea Party laid down its version of The Truth and said this is it. You will do things by our Truth or we will "bring it all down." Pick up any paper or watch any news program, even Fox, to see the results. Progressives have played their parts in this fiasco too, but the current mess is coming from the extreme right.

I would strongly suggest giving Rorty some study. If his writings are difficult for you then find a synopsis that is understandable and get as far into his opinions as you can. We have to begin a conversation and RIGHT NOW!

For an example of what things may look like if we were to follow the writings of Rorty read the following:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/10/opinion/the-day-our-leaders-got-unstuck.html?_r=1&scp=4&sq=thomas%20l%20friedman&st=cse

A Strange Tale of Tragedy

2011-08-05T12:30:00.000-04:00

I have been in The Hamptons for the last week where I played two nights with Great Caesar's Ghost. Great band and had a ball playing with them.

I have been trying to write this story for several days now but, and you will probably understand, it is very difficult.

The only comment I will make about the last blog is I am not going to open business as a psychic. Damn what a fiasco.

This story begins October 30, 1970. We had played a concert at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, coincidentally the birth place of Duane and Gregg. Someone picked up a big piece of tar (opium) and we were pulling little balls off of it and eating it, We also found a club and jammed after our show at Vandy. We finally made it back to our hotel and everyone scattered for the night. At that time Red Dog was the official driver of the "Windbag", the Winnebego camper in which we were then luxuriously traveling the country. After damn near a year in a Ford Econoline, trust me, it was luxury. Anyway Augie hadn't participated in the evening's mind altering delicacy and since the next show was in Atlanta, only a few hours drive, he wanted to get everyone in the Windbag and drive while it was night with no traffic.

Those of us still at command central started rounding up everyone and getting them ready to move their butts and baggage into "Winnie" (she had several nicknames). We tried calling Duane's room but no answer. We knocked on his door and no answer. We knew he had gone to his room so the first tingling of anxiety started. Someone got the hotel dude with the master key to open Duane's door and there he lay fast asleep. We tried waking him up but no deal. Then we turned on the lights and the tinglings jumped through the fuckin roof. His lips and fingernails had a slight bluish tint to them. An ambulance was called and all hell broke loose. We all jumped into the Windbag and somehow managed to keep up with it to the nearest hospital. Everyone scrambled out when they brought Duane out of the ambulance and their triage dude gave him a once over. I don't know if he was a doctor but he looked at us and said something to the effect of "we'll do what we can but don't hold out too much hope, he's pretty far gone." Then they ran him into the hospital.

I don't really know what was going through my head. It was all a bit surreal. I had eaten some of the tar so my mind wasn't exactly clear. I will never forget, however, Berry looking up and on the verge of tears saying over and over please just give him one more year.

Someone finally came out and informed us that Duane had pulled out of it and that he would be just fine. We even made it to Emory University for the gig that night.

I will not go through the details, but Berry's "prayer" was almost answered. Less than 24 hours shy of exactly one year later a truck pulled in front of Duane on his Sportster and he was killed. I was painting the bedroom of the house I was renting on Wimbish Road in Macon when Red Dog called me and told me I better get to the hospital, Duane had been in a wreck.

When I got to the hospital everyone was either crying, getting news, talking to whoever might give us an update and people were still arriving. I remember one intern that kept telling us if he had made it this long he would probably be ok. I also remember a doctor telling us not to pay any attention to that idiot intern, Duane was not going to be ok.. After a while nothing was happening and the tension was unbearable. Sometimes crying is just the right thing too do. For most of us we didn't know how, YET.

I think it was Bunky Odum that went with me but I know I was part of a two man crew that went to get everyone some wine. I'll never forget when we arrived at the door to the hospital dropping the wine I had onto the pavement when I was told: Duane had died.

I will not even attempt to relate the next few weeks other than to say it took me about two weeks to really learn how to cry. You simply cannot absorb something that overwhelming all at once. Fuck man, we were invincible. I was listening to Cowboy's "Please Be With Me" with Duane playing slide and the damn finally broke. To this day I can't hear that song without feeling those emotions.

Berry was devastated. I don't think Berry really knew how to exist in a world without Duane. The sparkle that was Berry was simply gone. He drank himself into a stupor almost daily. We continued to tour but Berry's heart just didn't seem be 100% into it any more. He did hit bottom and was talking about putting together a band that would include the "Ole Ladies" when two years and 13 days after asking for Duane's "one more year" he was riding his bike about two blocks from where Duane was killed and side swiped a city bus. He died from a fractured skull.

How do you deal with this? Duane was the leader. Berry was the instigator. I will say though that this time I had learned how to cry. We were no longer invincible and a year without Duane had burned that fact into my soul. God I miss them both.

It's really weird how we went on anyway and then the worst of all possible things that could happen happened. Success. On a level no one ever dreamed of and we sure were not ready for. Without Duane and Berry and with the world treating us like gods the whole thing just imploded.

You know, when I think back on those times March 1969 - October 1971, it's hard to believe all that happened in such a short time. We did more living in those two and a half years than most people could do in 10 life times.

What I Believe Is Going To Happen

2011-07-26T15:30:00.000-04:00

I hope I am right, but there is no doubt that we will all know soon enough.

Since 1979, the House of Representatives by rule has automatically raised the debt ceiling when passing a budget, except when the House votes to waive or repeal this rule. Why has it done so now? It is my opinion (I know the quote about opinions, but this is MY blog, you are free to express yours in a response or you can simply ignore it) that the Republicans have, since he was elected, had making sure that our President is not reelected their number the top of their agenda. Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, even stated in a speech to the senate that it is his number one priority (above all else that our country requires) to make sure that Obama is not reelected in 2012. Since that statement there is little doubt that a minority in the senate have used tactics like the filibuster and the totally undemocratic ability that a single senator can block any bill from even coming to the floor for debate and vote to stop any initiative that might in any way help Obama even if its to the detriment of the country. This is democracy?

I digress: it seems quite obvious that Republicans in both houses are doing all in their power to undermine the President. I don't know about you but does this tactic seem to you a bit unpatriotic? We had an election. Obama won by a landslide. He is our president. To do anything possible to undermine him undermines the country and is, to me, traitorous. The Democrats did not agree with Bush, but in no way did they do to him anything even resembling what the GOP is doing to Obama. When, in the history of this country, has the Speaker of the House demeaned the president with such disrespect? Boehner called Obama the late night comedian in the White House after last night's speeches. Boehner also spurted several complete lies in his rant. I defy you to find a single untruth in Obama's.

I grew up in a country that was the dominate country and economy in the world. The US dollar, until just before "The Nixon Shock" of 1971 was what all currencies were tied to. It did turn out for the best when that policy allowed the dollar and all currencies the float. This policy has saved our butts on many occasions. This country became what it was to a great extent because the two or three generations before us (our grandparents and great grandparents) spent a large portion of their wealth creating the infrastructure that is the backbone of this country. They did these things (like the electrical grid, the rail system, the interstate highways, etc, etc) knowing that they would not benefit from them. These were massive, long term programs that they knew would take generations to complete. Still they loved this country and were patriotic enough to build them. We have been the beneficiaries of their largesse. What are we doing? NADA. Greed is the religion of this generation. We spend precious little even keeping this infrastructure in working order. Bridges are collapsing, the interstate highway system is in shambles, The electrical grid has already gone down for several days a few years ago in the northeast causing true chaos. Imagine if we get a repeat (we have done little to prevent this from happening) and New York is without power for weeks or even months. Total chaos will ensue. You can even imagine things getting severe enough that after all of the animals are eaten people will start eating each other. Why is this happening? GREED!!!!! Ronald Reagan and Gordon Gecko have led the way to where we are now where greed is no longer a negative but has become "The New American Way."

I continue with my digressions so enough. Back to the first five words of this blog. I must admit that after Obama's speech last night I am not so certain that what I thought yesterday is still true, but I still believe that in may be. We will find out in 6-7 days.

Obama has proposed a 4 trillion reduction in spending. He has asked to GOP to at least throw in a modest increase in revenues consisting of the removal of tax loopholes for the top 1% or so. I believe that he has offered these cuts (including the big three) knowing that Grover Norquist has 95% of the GOP by the balls and that there is no way that they will agree to any revenues, no matter where they come from.

He also knows that Wall Street and big business has let these Republicans know that not raising the debt ceiling and defaulting on loans already spent is not acceptable. The USA will lose it's position as the safest place to borrow and invest. We will most likely slip back in a recession much worse than the one we are coming out of, or worse and this will go global.

Obama has said that he will not sign any stop gap bills to get us through the short term and, knowing that Grover Norquist rules the GOP that there is no way the GOP will accept his 4 trillion dollar in tax cuts.

I believe (I hope) that at the last minute congress will pass a bill meant to gt us through the short term with not much more than a trillion or so in cuts and no revenues and that Obama will veto it. This puts the GOP between a rock and a hard place with nothing else to do but what has been done the last 89 times the debt ceiling was raised (17 times under Reagan, 7 under W) and in an hour or so (that's all it will take) pass a single sentence bill raising the ceiling from ..... to ....., no strings attached which is what almost every president for the last 89 debt ceiling increases have gotten and is what Obama asked for six months ago.

I hope I am right. I truly hope that Obama is this good. I know that he is smart enough it is simply a matter of having the balls to pull it off. We shall see all too soon.

Later yall

How Did This Happpen?

2011-07-24T15:33:00.000-04:00

For some time now I have wondered how the term "liberal" has come to have a negative connotation with so many Americans. "Progressive" being another word that has suffered the same. Growing up the word liberal was always associated with something good (unless it was a liberal pile of shit being dumped on my head or something similar). I believe that the pile of shit is exactly what people like Carl Rove have dumped on us to get so many people to buy into this reaction to "Liberal". I have been called a liberal by a few of you and there is little doubt that you expect me to take that as an insult. I don't. I would think that being called a Conservative (as in stuck with the status quo) would be a fighting word.

On the other hand I always believed that "conservative" had a negative connotation (see above) unless I was being served canned green peas (which I despise) or something similar. I decided to look up some definitions. They follow:

lib·er·al

[lib-er-uhl, lib-ruhl] Show IPA

–adjective

favorable to progress or reform, as in political or religious affairs.

( often initial capital letter ) noting or pertaining to a political party advocating measures of progressive political reform.

of, pertaining to, based on, or advocating liberalism.

favorable to or in accord with concepts of maximum individual freedom possible, especially as guaranteed by law and secured by governmental protection of civil liberties.

favoring or permitting freedom of action, especially with respect to matters of personal belief or expression: a liberal policy toward dissident artists and writers.

of or pertaining to representational forms of government rather than aristocracies and monarchies.

free from prejudice or bigotry; tolerant: a liberal attitude toward foreigners.

open-minded or tolerant, especially free of or not bound by traditional or conventional ideas, values, etc.

characterized by generosity and willingness to give in large amounts: a liberal donor.

10.

given freely or abundantly; generous: a liberal donation.

11.

not strict or rigorous; free; not literal: a liberal interpretation of a rule.

12.

of, pertaining to, or based on the liberal arts.

13.

of, pertaining to, or befitting a freeman.

pro·gres·sive

[pruh-gres-iv] Show IPA

–adjective

favoring or advocating progress, change, improvement, or reform, as opposed to wishing to maintain things as they are, especially in political matters: a progressive mayor.

making progress toward better conditions; employing or advocating more enlightened or liberal ideas, new or experimental methods, etc.: a progressive community.

characterized by such progress, or by continuous improvement.

( initial capital letter ) of or pertaining to any of the Progressive parties in politics.

going forward or onward; passing successively from one member of a series to the next; proceeding step by step.

noting or pertaining to a form of taxation in which the rate increases with certain increases in taxable income.

of or pertaining to progressive education: progressive schools.

Grammar . noting a verb aspect or other verb category that indicates action or state going on at a temporal point of reference.

con·serv·a·tive

[kuhn-sur-vuh-tiv] Show IPA

–adjective

disposed to preserve existing conditions, institutions, etc., or to restore traditional ones, and to limit change.

cautiously moderate or purposefully low: a conservative estimate.

traditional in style or manner; avoiding novelty or showiness: conservative suit.

( often initial capital letter ) of or pertaining to the Conservative party.

( initial capital letter ) of, pertaining to, or characteristic of Conservative Jews or Conservative judaism.

having the power or tendency to conserve; preservative.

Mathematics . (of a vector or vector function) having curl equal to zero; irrotational; lamellar.

I'm not going to rant further on this subject. Other than to say that "Conservatives" seem to be a lot better at framing the debate that do liberals. As they have obviously succeeded in the word game we are now getting very close to those conservatives putting the entire globe into a world of hurt.

How about a conversation about this? We've been pretty good about that of late.

Later yall.

IMAGES FROM BYRON

2011-07-23T15:03:00.000-04:00

Being I had to remove the video from Byron, I though you guys might enjoy these images from there. The first bunch are scans of what you can see that they are. I stuck the photos of the Allman Brothers at the bottom so you would go through them all.

ENJOY!!!!!

A Chill Pill From The ABB While The Fools Fiddle

2011-07-21T13:52:00.003-04:00

I am encouraged by the last couple of days. It seems that the people who came here once just to spew some venom my way have receded to whatever den they came out of. Obviously the last piece was my opinion and "need I say it" not everyone shares it. What was great was the level of civility that was maintained while we discussed our differences. If only, blah, blah , blah. You can fill in those blahs for yourselves.

For those of you that didn't see the video and those that came back to see it again, I am very, very sorry but it seems that we don't own that video. The dude that does does not want it up and insisted that I take it down. There are plans for a long form film about the ABB that should include this one and several others from Byron. For those that saw it I hope you enjoyed it and here is the story without further editing.

Today I have the urge to ramble a bit on where my life went after the place I left it at the end of my tribute to Duane. We are just beginning rehearsals, with "Trouble No More" being the first song we learned and Duane calling Gregg to get to Jacksonville ASAP. We pick things up with the next thing we started working on: Spencer Davis' "Don't Want Ya No More". I have no recollection (sorry Rupert) of who or how that "Don't Want Ya No More" line came up but someone, probably Duane, really liked it so we used it as a starting point for a structured jam that developed into what became one of our most used opening numbers. Our first title for it was "The Mother Fucker". If you're not familiar with it it takes the line from Davis' tune, repeats it and then we go into a transitional lick that ends by coming out of the shuffle we were playing and switching into a straight 4/4 rhythm for Gregg to play two two organ solos over. Then we just slip back into the shuffle for two guitar solos that are followed followed by a dual guitar line (first time ever for this new tool that in many ways will come to define a major part of our sound) that leads into a second guitar solo, two passes, that ends with a repeat of the earlier dual line that retards into everyone holding the final chord until Duane plays a screaming intro into a slow 12 bar blues groove. This is pretty much what we had learned when Gregg showed up.

I remember that when we played these for Gregg, he took Duane aside and whispered to him "I ain't good enough to pay in this band" Duane just looked at him and said sit your ass down (behind a brand new Hammond B-3) and within a short time Gregg gave us "Not My Cross to Bear" and those two have been paired up for eternity ever since. After Gregg realized that, not only was he good enough to "play" in this band, but that he had a few other things to contribute, he began to pull out tune after tune, Whippin' Post, Dreams, Black Hearted Woman, etc, etc and the ABB was off to the races.

We didn't stay in Jacksonville for long and within days we all piled into a white (aren't they all?) Ford Econoline and headed up to Macon, where Phil Walden was headquartered (MUCH more on him in my piece on the music business). We landed at a place owned (rented) by Twiggs Lyndon (Twiggs could be considered the very first member of the ABB) our road manager. It was a two room apartment totally devoid of any furnishings except a Coke machine that Twiggs kept filled with beer. The idea was that if you paid a quarter for a beer then we would always have funds to refill the machine. Since we seldom had a quarter, Twiggs was always opening the machine and we seldom had funds for more beer. Somehow, not sure exactly how, it did seem to always have beer in it though. Maybe it just felt good about being used for third base when we would come in late at night after hours of rehearsal in an empty warehouse behind a barber shop on Broadway and start up a game of cork-ball. I'll explain that game in its entirety later. We played a lot of cork-ball in those days.

We threw a few mattresses around the rooms and "The Hippy Crash Pad" was formally born. I always thought it very strange that a groupp of guys with hair down their shoulders and even one black man in it was able to hang in that place (being Macon, GA, circa 1969), eat psilocybin and play ball, sliding into third base (our beloved coke machine) at 4-5am and not have the police show up and haul us all off to jail or worse. For some reason rather than call the cops, everyone in that building just moved out. One day we came back from practice and one family was moving and we lined the hallway and gave them a round of applause. They were not amused. We were ecstatic. Eventually some lovely young girls moved into the apt. across the hall and we wound up renting the apt next to "The Crash Pad". We really had a ton of fun in that place. Wesleyan College for Women supplied us with a stream of beautiful playmates, the music was well on its way to a new religion. I had begun reading "The Lord of the Rings" the day of our first rehearsal and between group gropes, cork-ball games, etc was living in the magical world of "Middle Earth". Life was as good as it gets.

By the way, it became an annual right of spring for me for the next few years that I reread Tolkien. I have probably read those books at least 20 times and seen the films even more. Maybe a piece on the "Ring" will be in order one day, we'll see. I have had many theories as to what the "ring" symbolizes and I will probably have many more. Would be nice to hear what yall think.

Gonna jump ahead a year. Don't worry, I promise to fill in 1969-1970, but I came across the above video so I'm gonna yap a bit about the "2nd Atlanta Pop Festival" held in Byron, GA., July 3, 4, 5, 1970. We were just getting started when the first Atlanta Pop Festival was held in '69, so no one really wanted us to be there except us. That was just about the time we began playing the free Sunday concerts in Piedmont Park, later on that too.

Byron was incredible. Estimates range from 150,000 to 500,000 but most rational people believe that 200,000 is probably pretty close. Whatever it was it was a shit load of people and there is little doubt that Byron was one of the launching pads for The Allman Brothers. I mean we played and played and played. When we couldn't get on the main stage, we would go across the road and jam with everyone else on the free stage they thought would satisfy everyone and keep them from tearing down the fences and just coming in. WRONG!!! First day, as soon as critical mass was reached, the gates came down everyone poured in. The bands weren't paid and the promoters lost their respective asses. We could have used the bucks but, fuck it, we were there to spread this new religion we had discovered and did we ever preach. You can see just a tiny bit from the first set in the above video. This was early in the day while we were all still relatively sober. Don't remember Duane jumping around that much. There is little doubt that he was having a ball. We played a very long set that afternoon and man was it hot. We played another set on that stage either later that day or, more likely, the next. It had been sweltering all day, with naked kids in various stages of consciousness swimming in a river near the festival site. Believe me that part of Georgia had never seen anything quite like it. It was amazing that things went as smoothly as they did. But they did. Anyway, when we got up to play that evening show the sun was still up and everyone was still sweltering but as we played a small storm moved in. About halfway through our set it started pouring. You talk about a crowd getting its second wind, well these kids with that cool refreshing rain pouring down on them just went berserk. They all stood up started dancing throwing mud and in general really kicking into a mass of kids making a joyful noise while listening to us do the same. Well....the only cover on the stage was a huge tarp and once it filled with water it came crashing down on us with a vengeance. Of course we had to shut off all of the electric stuff, but we had two drummers. Jaimoe and I never missed a lick. We just kept playing with huge splashes of water flying up every time I hit my floor tom, This somehow raised the energy level of the crowd even higher. All the electric players started looking for and finding things to beat on and we just played and played until, after a while, it stopped raining. We turned all the electrics back on and blew that place apart. One of our truly high points early on that was followed by many more.

So went Byron. We left there, continued to tour almost without stopping for many more months. Byron, however, introduced us to the world in a big way as well as putting us in front of thousands for the first time. It was quite intoxicating. The Allman Brothers Band were taking off in every way. That three days raised the bar drastically.

Later Yall.

The Damn Debt Ceiling

2011-07-19T12:15:00.000-04:00

Some random thoughts about the mess in Washington ATM. Let's start with the most obvious. This is the first time since T-bills were issued to fight WWI that there has been any debate at all about raising the debt ceiling. I believe it has been raised 89 times without controversy. Seven times under George W. A single line from the congress raising the debt from ..... to ...... No problem. To those of you that have called me and others that lean toward the democratic party and use terms like "the fool in charge" to describe Obama please tell me when in the history of the nation one party has been as intransigent as the Republican Party is being about this issue, especially when the consequences are so dire? During the Bush years, while two wars were being fought, off of the books, and the most expensive drug bill in history was passed (which included the inability to use its massive leverage to negotiate lower prices and simply gave certain drug companies huge profits), that took a budget surplus and turned it into the mess we are in right now all we heard was: "Debt doesn't matter, it's a small part of GDP". Now, all of a sudden the Republicans seem to have completely passed on any job creation that was their promise during their 2010 campaigns (Boehner's comment that a new GOP budget proposal may cost several hundred thousand jobs, but "so be it" being the obvious philosophy behind this "cut the debt at all cost" new religion of the GOP's). Now the debt is, according to the GOP, our one and only problem and be damned if any new revenue, especially from the wealthy, will help get us out of this end of times issue, it is slash and burn time. Obama is to blame for the jobs issue. Didn't you all know that? The Republicans have decided, in the interest of cutting debt, damn the consequences, to stop legislating. You did now that it is the job of the head of the executive branch to enact and pass laws, didn't ya? Oh and in spite of jobs gains continually over the last years, corporate profits that are breaking all historical records, the stock market back up in lala land, Obama didn't create this recession, but he has made it worse. Ask Mitt Romney, he'll tell you, again and again and again.

One case in point is the last jobs report that all are screaming at Obama about. Only 18,000 new jobs added. What no one seems to want to talk about is that there were 54,000 private sector jobs added. It was the slash and burn policies of conservative governors and state legislatures, as well as the federal congress that accounted for 36,000 public sector jobs being lost. Look as I may, except for a few "Blue Dog Dems" I can find only the Republicans that are doing this. The main reason I lean toward Obama and the Dems is that what the GOP is doing: cutting government spending during a recession has been proven time and time through history to always be the wrong thing to do. Nobel Prize winning economist, Paul Krugman, predicted when the Republicans cut the amount of stimulus that Obama and the Dems wanted (40% of which were tax cuts) that right about this time in 2010 the economy would again begin to slide. Well he was right.

I was told by one of you that it was WWII, not The New Deal that ended the Great Depression. As I have said before, so what? I have been told that our debt, right now, is higher than it has been since the federal government started borrowing. Bullshit!!!!! In actual dollars, maybe. Today the debt is around 24% of GDP. At the end of WWII it was over 120% of GDP. Look at what happened. When the dust settled from that debt out of it arose a juggernaut of an economy that has dominated the world for 70 years. Again, compare the economic policies under the tax increasing Bill Clinton and the tax cutting, "never saw a spending bill I didn't like or regulation I did" Bush years. That is just the recent past.

The Roman Republic started very much as we did. Italy was covered with small family farms and you had to be a land owner to be a citizen and be able to vote. By the time of Julius Caesar only a few hundred families owned all of the property in Italy and much of the rest of what Rome had become. Caesar was a populist who wanted land reform beginning with the land that he had promised to the soldiers that fought all of those years with him. Brutus, Cassius and the others that did him in were all members of that elite. De damned if Caesar was going to take one mm of what was theirs. Thus ended The Roman Republic and any chance for land reform and once Octavian took out Marc Antony and became Augustus Caesar, the first among equals, tyranny was the Roman system of government (with the real power in the Roman army) until it's demise centuries later. The change was brought about by a few grabbing all of the power and wealth and fuck everyone else. Sound familiar?

This has happened many times throughout history. Remember Marie Antoinette's "let them eat cake" shortly before those proposed cake eaters cut off her head? It is ironic that this event is one of the main motivators for the US Revolution.

There is another major trend in the Republican Party that concerns me and should concern us all. Until recently a sworn oath to protect and defend the constitution was all that any politician had to take to govern. Not too long ago Grover Norquist, leader of Americans For Tax Reform, came up with a pledge, signed by 95% of Republicans and a few Democrats that put in writing, signed,and sealed, that they would NEVER raise taxes (including obviously unwarranted tax breaks). This pledge is one of the major factors in the GOP refusing Obama's offer to cut 3-4 trillion in spending (3 to 4 times the amount the the accursed health reform law) because it did not allow them to throw in a single penny of revenue. Now you tell me how you could not, given the sad fact that all we have are Republicans and Democrats to choose from, choose the Democrats as the party of "the little guys"? Now we are seeing a growing number of oaths that are popping up, all on the Republican side. Please tell me of any oaths, other than the one taken when they are sworn into office, that the Democrats are signing. We got The Susan B. Anthony pledge to only appoint pro-lifers and cut off all funding to any agency, like Planned Parenthood (talk about hypocrisy, over 90% of what they do is to prevent unwanted pregnancies. What better way to avoid an abortion?). This one has been signed by Bachmann, Gingrich, Pawlenty. Ron Paul and Rick Santorum (if you don't know who he is, Google Santorum). We got a cut, cap and balance pledge to gut federal spending by cutting and capping spending and enacting a balanced budget amendment to the constitution signed by all of the above as well as Romney and Cain. We got The Marriage Vow that is just to weird to imagine. It includes "no Shariah Law" as well as the statement that black children were more likely, under slavery, to be a part of a nuclear family when the fact is it was against the law for slaves to get married and children were routinely taken from their mothers and sold. Bachmann and Santorum still signed it. How the hell can you govern when you take absurd pledges that remove your ability to compromise? How can you govern, if you can't compromise? It is the Replicans refusal to compromiise in the least that has us in our current pickle. That is a fact.

I agree with Paul Burke's post 100%. If we truly get "a free market" and all regulations are removed we are then totally screwed and those that have the money, e.g. the power will finish off, like Brutus, Cassius and their gang, what little is left of Democracy. The government is our last hope. Believe it!!!

The reasoning is simple and unavoidable. When the engine of our consumer economy is losing ground and have nothing left for the goods an services they want and more and more even their most basic needs, then companies will not be expanding, they will be firing not hiring. without demand for their good and services this is the only fiscally responsible way to go. There is only one entity that can break this cycle and that is the federal government. Big business and the most wealthy are sitting on trillions of dollars. They will continue to do so. Why should they do otherwise? A huge influx into things like mass transit, fixing our centuries old, crumbling electric grid, using this crisis in the same way we did the attack on Pearl Harbor or Sputnik and taking the lead in what must be the next global economic industry: clean energy. This would not only create all of those jobs that would lead to much greater revenue and then we could cut federal spending. Then and only then do we stand a chance of maintaining our position as the global economic leader. If we don't then better start learning Chinese. Look at what the race to the moon did for our economy. Look at what happened after WWII. Imagine what will happen if we don't do something drastic and keep heading in the direction we are headed. Imagine not raising the debt ceiling.

All the best. We got some rough road ahead I am very much afraid. Especially if the conservative agenda doesn't lose a great deal of its appeal.

Duane Allman

2011-07-17T13:19:00.001-04:00

I was going to wait a day or two before writing anything more but the comment by Lacyguitar: "Wow! Duane was amazing! Allman Bros would not have existed without him." got me motivated. I am certain that many of you know that Duane put the Allman Brothers band together and was our leader. He led because that was just the way he was. He was very intelligent, totally honest, was of the highest character, morally and ethically and I would say that Duane was one of those people that, if you are lucky, you may meet one like him in your life. If you are extremely fortunate you will become friends with him, as I did.

I first met Duane when the band I was playing in, The Bitter Ind, decided to take our summer off from FSU and head to Daytona Beach to find a gig for the summer. We auditioned for damn near every club there and were met with the same results at each of them: "You guys are great but we need a band that people can dance to". We were auditioning at the last one we could find, The Martinique, when in walk "The Beatles", at least you would have thought so. They were a group of guys led by two blond headed dudes called the Allman Joys and man did the folks around Daytona think the world of them. This was the first time I laid eyes on Duane and Gregg. Well our audition finished with the usual comment from the club owner and we were sitting in the back of the place talking about putting our tails between our legs and heading back to Jacksonville when Duane came up to us and started going on and on about how much he liked our band. We told him our situation so he just said the hell with it, come on over to our house and hang for a few days until you can work something out. Well his house happened to be 100 Van Avenue, where Duane and Gregg lived with their mother. It also happened to be the place where all of the "heads" in Daytona would hang. We spent the next two or three days sleeping on couches and the floor and finally did decid to put our tails between our legs and......

Several months later, after getting a job working a warehouse for some precursor to Walmart, I got a call from Duane telling me that they were in town playing a club called "The Comic Book" and their drummer just quit would I mind playing with them till they could find a replacement. Of course I said "of course". It turned out that the manager of the club was a huge Dylan fan and since The Bitter Ind played pretty much everything Dylan ever wrote, either in his style or that of The Birds, Duane got us an audition. Well we got the job, Gregg and Duane took off, found another drummer and we played that place for over eight months.

We would run into them from time to time playing around the south and one day we were in Daytona and stopped in to see them. This was just after they had left L.A. after the fiasco called The Hour Glass. Our band was kind of stuck in a rut plus we were recording our second album in Miami and Duane said we should join forces. Well hell this was incredible. We did and worked up a bunch of material that they played and a lot that we played and started touring as The Bitter Ind, The Allman joys or The Hour Glass depending on where we were playing. We also spent some time in Miami finishing that record. Melissa was one of those recordings. This was the first time it was ever recorded. Gregg had written some other tunes and we laid them down too. The crooks from Miami we were working for finally released those recordings on Bold Records, with Duane and Gregg's picture lifted off of Idlewild South as the cover and called it "Daune and Gregg Allman". You will most definitely get a rant sometime about what I think about the music business. Well Gregg decided to head back to L.A.to try it on his own and get Duane and the other members of The Hour Glass out of their record and management contracts. Duane and I headed back to Daytona and this was when he got the call to come to Muscle Shoals and be one of their session guitarists. You can read all about what happened there from many sources.

Sometime later (I'm not great with dates) I was married, living back in Jacksonville, just about to give up on the music business and go back to college and finish my degree in math. (I guess that would have led to a nice teaching job somewhere) when there was a knock at my door and there was Duane with this muscle-bound black dude with an afro, a tank top and a damn bear tooth claw necklace around his neck. As only Duane could he said "Butch this is Jaimoe, my new drummer. Jaimoe, this is Butch, my old drummer. Well they came in, Duane hung for a while and then headed of to go see Berry Oakley and just left Jaimoe sitting there. Well my upbringing didn't really prepare me for this. If you know Jaimoe he is a man of few words. He just sat there, frowning and staring at the floor and all I could think was, "Oh my god a militant n..... he's gonna kill me. He wound up staying with me for a few weeks that trip and has become my very dear friend and partner for the 42 years since that day. What a wonderful way for a middle class, white Southern boy to be introduced to the real world. Thank you, Jaimoe.

It turned out that Duane had gotten really bored with session playing and the reason he was in Jacksonville was to start a new band. Once word got around this became the focal point for the burgeoning hippy community in Jax and we started getting together at least once a week, setting up huge piles of gear and jamming all day long. After a while Duane had pretty much decided on who he wanted for his band. Jaimoe came with him, Berry Oakley was the bass player and Berry convinced Duane that Dickey Betts would add a very cool new twist to things. Damn was Berry right! There were several drummers trying for a spot too. Jaimoe kept telling Duane that I was the one, but back then I was a pretty introverted player. Humility was what I had been taught and humility and rock and roll don't really go together. I think Duane decided that Jaimoe was right but I also think that he felt I needed an attitude adjustment if I was going to play in his band.

I will never forget the day. We were jamming in an open field surrounded by woods next to the #1 AM radio station in Jax: WAPE. Well we got into a shuffle and it really wasn't going anywhere. I did my usual "Oh god they're all looking at me" and pulled back. Duane turned around, stared me square in the eyes and played a screaming lick that just yelled "Come on mother fucker, play". To which I further retreated. Well he did it again, I pulled back again but then on the third or fourth time I realized that he was showing me up in front of all of those people and I started to get mad. I began to beat my drums like I was hittin him upside the head. We kept this up for quite a while. I mean we were locked eye to eye glaring at each other and the music just took off. In my anger, I forgot to be afraid and started playing the drums. Finally Duane smiled, pointed at me and said "there ya go". It was like he reached inside of me and flicked a switch. The light went off in my head "you can play so stop apologizing" It was that epiphany that made me capable of doing what I have done for the last 42+ years. It was Duane that caused that epiphany.

Duane Allman was the most powerful character I have ever known. After 40 years I still have dreams that I run into him. There is a part of me that will not let him go. He most certainly changed my life and touched the lives of everyone fortunate enough to be around him. He asked me to join the band. We started rehearsals and learned a few tunes "Trouble No More" being the first. Then he called his baby bro. He was absolutely right that there was no one else alive that could sing in that band.

Duane, I miss you, I love you and I always will.

THANK YOU !!!!!!

Some Responses To Your Comments On My FIrst Blog Post

2011-07-15T14:27:00.002-04:00

Wow. I am blown away by the amount of people that actually took the time to read my first rant. Before I rail on again, I feel like I should respond to some of your comments. Judi, thank you for getting things started. All the best to you and Paco. Miss you guys. To all of you that liked anything I had to say and said so: thank you. To those of you that didn't: thank you for at least showing up and giving it a read. You are obviously entitled to your opinions (as was pointed out by IdlewildRickT, it does say "The World According to Butch Trucks" in big letters at the top of the page. To say that what I write is self indulgent is redundant to the max. 'Tis the nature of the beast. To Sully and Gina: thank you for your insights into my comments concerning religion. I promise a full blown rant in the near future that will give you a great deal more to react to. To those of you that said that you don't really care what I have to say, why do you waste your time reading it? Then waste more time responding? You must have better things to do. As I said earlier the top of this page leaves no doubt who's opinion this is. I think "Fox News" is nothing but a propaganda arm of the GOP and that Glenn Beck and his idiotic conspiracy theories about anything the the left of Hitler are full of, not only his opinions, which he is entitled to, but false information, and I believe that some of what he says is akin to yelling fire in a crowded theater. He is dangerous and I believe he belongs in a mental institution. The result of our last election is, in my opinion, due somewhat to people like Mr. Beck. To get to the point, I just choose not to waste my time watching, listening or in anyway paying attention to him and others like him. You have that same choice. Especially the anonymous that thinks I am a narcissistic horses ass: you apparently know me and have some kind of axe to grind. If you want to continue to come here and post, then be my guest but don't you have things to do in your life that are more rewarding? To Scott: I would like to know what you mean about my "boycott" of The Black Keys. My only contact in life with them came at the 2009 Wanee Fest. They refused to allow us to put them on our webcast. I spent a lot of time trying to change their minds but they decided not to. I think you may have some bad info. To 34d, I have read "Misquoting Jesus". I'll get into that one and many more in the one I promised Sully and Gina. Whether or not The New Deal got us out of the depression and it was actually WWII, what would you call WWII from a fiscal perspective? We spent many times our GDP fighting that war and look at what happened. That level of "deficit spending" created an economic juggernaut that has dominated the world for almost 70 years. Now, even after that kind of evidence, we still get the foolishness that cutting taxes and cutting spending will boot the economy. Cripes, just look at the stats under Clinton and W if WWII isn't enough proof for ya.

Mostly I would like to respond to another anonymous (amazing how many of you have that name :-). First off thank you for the compliment about my drumming. I do actually agree that I may spout what I have learned and do know out a feeling of intellectual inferiority. I would propose the concept that most people that get on a stage, write, act or do anything to get public attention do so, at least to some degree, out of an inner need for approval. I chose to play music and did not complete my education so I have spent a great deal of my free time (and fortunately musicians have a lot of that) reading everything from the classics (one of the worst experiences of my life was The Peloponnesian War), fantasy, science fiction and once I finish Ulysses I think I'll give my brain a rest and reread "The Wheel of Time". Someone is finally writing the ending. I also have hundreds of lectures from a company called "The Teaching Company" that range from philosophy to literature to history and even some science. This is what I listen to in my car so every trip to the grocery store is like going to school. I will not be ignorant. I may not be right to some of you. Most of what I am saying is opinion and not provable either way. I promise you that what I say will be based on facts not lies and if you see a misstatement please feel free to show me where I am wrong. But I digress.

After taking your criticism, anonymous, I would like to offer you a bit. You are wrong about what John Locke wrote. I have spent a good deal of time the last two days researching his quote (BTW, I got my information that Jefferson quoted Locke in "The Declaration" from a lecture by Dr. Alan Charles Kors, professor of history at The University of Pennsylvania, I didn't feel the need to fact check him). It turns out that what Locke actually said came from a 1689 piece "A Letter Concerning Toleration". His quote was: "Civil interest I call life, liberty, health, and indolency of body: and the possession of outward things". Dr. Kors referred to Locke's "Second Treatise on Government" 1690 where he said "Man being born, as has been proved, with a title to perfect freedom, and an uncontrolled [uncontrolled] enjoyment of all the rights and privileges of the law of nature, equally with any other man, or number of men in the world, hath by nature a power, not only to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate." There is a lot of debate about what exactly Locke meant by "estate" and the conservative response seems to be "land". You will find "life, liberty and land" attributed to Locke everywhere, but he never said it as far as I can find. If you can point out where he did, please do. I mean that in all seriousness. I meant what I said when I said I try and learn something everyday. Jefferson did quote Locke later when he used the phrase "a long train of abuses."

I'll wrap this one up by saying that the single most influential person on my life (other than my wife) was Duane Allman. I'll tell the story of how he changed my outlook and my life in a moment of epiphany some other time. I'll just end this with my favorite quote of his. Most of you know it. It is on his gravestone. He wrote it in his notebook Dec 31, 1968, just weeks before he started putting together the Allman Brothers Band.

"This year I will be more thoughtful of my fellow man, exert more effort in each of my endeavors professionally as well as personally, take love wherever I find it, and offer it to everyone who will take it. In this coming year I will seek knowledge from those wiser than me and try to teach those who wish to learn from me. I love being alive and I will be the best man I possibly can -------"

FIRST BLOG

2011-07-13T12:45:00.006-04:00

I was raised a devout Southern Baptist in the beautiful town of Jackass Flats (better known as Jacksonville, Florida). Growing up, if the church doors were open, my young ass was in it, no questions asked. Worst of all I bought, lock, stock and barrel all of the dogmatic propaganda that was being shoved into my as yet unformed noggin. In 1965 I finally left home and headed off to the booming metropolis of Tallahassee and Florida State University where I was to spend about a year and a half majoring in staying out of Vietnam. Although I did receive that degree, sic, FSU didn't seem to like the fact that I refused to attend their classes and after the first trimester of 1967 they asked me to get my lazy ass off of their campus. During this time I joined up with two acquaintances (later to become two of the best friends of my life) from high school (Scott Boyer and David Brown) and we formed The Bitter Ind. I guess we were the very first hippies at FSU. We learned everything The Birds, Bob Dylan, The Lovin' Spoonful did along with some Buffalo Springfield, Jefferson Airplane and even one Rolling Stones tune thrown into the mix. While this was happening on a macro level my brain went through a very radical change on a micro level. I started to think for myself for the first time in my life and after several months of serious consideration I got really pissed at all of that crap that had been shoved into me. I went from Christian to atheist at light speed. When you take the time to really think about "God's Word" and then spend even a little time studying the "historic" bible it doesn't take a genius to realize that if one book says "It is by your faith that ye shall be known, not by your actions (from one of "Paul's Epistles)" and another book says "It is by your actions ye shall be known, not by your faith (from James)" then what I had been fed all my life about the "King James" version of the bible being the absolute "word of God" and thus infallible just ain't true (I trust you noticed that both of those passages can't be true, ergo one is false and ergo there is at least one false statement in the bible). I have spent a good deal of the 45+ years since that epiphany studying the real history of the origins and evolution of Christianity and it sure ain't purty. I can't find a single other cause for more suffering, pain and death in the history of the Western World. Now I find myself watching Michelle Bachmann (ya know she really does have a very slim chance) spout that crap and watch people all over this country eat it up. Segue to politics.

I would consider myself a liberal. I know who the three philosophers are that Jefferson used as the basis for the US Constitution (a little test, do you?). For example who wrote, "All men are created equal. That they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?" (I do know that's from the Declaration, not the Constitution, but the influences are the same). Hint: it wasn't Mr. Jefferson. I have studied some philosophy and will continue to do so until the day I die. I believe it is one of the purposes in my life to learn something new everyday. Now it seems that everyday I read the newspaper (The New York Times, and The Palm Beach Post) or watch CNN, MSNBC or one of the network news shows. Just can't abide more than a couple of minutes of Fox without destroying my TV, 'sides anyone that considers Fox "news" is a big part of the problem I am going to yap about. The art of "fact-checking" seems to have been removed from that arm of the GOP.

My rag today is a very simple one, but I believe is at the root of why we are going down the tubes. I learned in high school that the US government was built on a tripartite system. (if you don't know what that means, go look it up). The other day Obama was doing a "Tweet" conference and he received a tweet from Boehner saying "We gave you all that money now where are the jobs?" (or something to that effect). I was blown away by how Obama let Boehner get away with framing even that simple tweet. First off, "all that money" was a fraction of what Obama asked for and (as we have since learned was needed) 40% of "all of that money" were tax cuts (See the Bush years for what tax cuts do for job growth, BTW I will not go dig up charts, statistics, etc, you can do that yourself, but they fully support the statement that tax cuts do not create jobs). Obama's response to Boehner was some blah, blah about what he has done. He should have used that opportunity and the many others like it to remind us all that he is the President. He is the head of the executive arm of our system. It is not his job to write laws. A very simple response would have been: Mr. Speaker your house has passed exactly 20 bills since its beginning. Not one of these bills have dealt with anything of any real import (three were just bills naming public buildings). It is your job as the legislature to legislate. You did pass an extremely watered down version of the stimulus I asked for soon after taking office. Now as soon as you can put any kind of jobs bill on my desk that makes any sense I will be glad to sign it. Getting it to me is your job, not mine. I will continue to try and set the agenda, but in the end you must take responsibility for congresses lack of action and stop doing all in your power to make me look like bad guy. Are you and your fellow Republicans really prepared to let this country go down the tubes just to make sure I am not re-elected? It sure looks that way to me. I guess the final statement is my personal view and I doubt if Obama really should be quite that in your face, but I do think he had better start teaching the American public a few lessons in basic civics, seems no one else wants to.